News Coverage
We Need to Protect More Land, Not Less
Published July 3, 2008
A recent Post-Dispatch editorial called for plowing up portions of the nation's premier farmland protection initiative, the Conservation Reserve Program, in hopes that planting corn on highly erodible lands will ease pressure on corn markets and lower prices of food and animal feed.
This might sound like good policy, but it will not work. Plowing up the land in the CRP will do nothing to lower food or feed prices, but it will flush billions of dollars of conservation progress down the Mississippi and very likely aggravate global warming.
There are few better investments of taxpayer dollars than the land reserve project, which has protected millions of acres of sensitive lands nationwide and significantly reduced soil erosion, all the while costing taxpayers about one tenth as much as traditional farm subsidies. And unlike most farm subsidies — which concentrate wealth in the hands of the wealthy — this program spreads the money around and creates more economic value than it costs.
The value of the Conservation Reserve Program in reduced water pollution and soil erosion alone is about $5 billion per year, according to a University of Minnesota study. On top of that, conserving these lands has generated billions in increased hunting revenues each year, not to mention resurrecting the central migratory flyway and the Prairie Pothole ecosystem and protecting at least 1.8 million acres of critical streamside habitat. Many Midwestern towns probably would be at even greater risk from flood waters without the protections of lands currently in the CRP.
We could consider sacrificing portions of the CRP if there were any evidence that it might lower food prices for the poor or help us fight global warming. But opening up these lands for argricultural use would do neither.
First, it is too late in the season to realize significant yields on any corn planted this year. And even over the long haul, there is no reason to believe that corn planted on these acres would yield enough to have any impact on food or feed prices, given surging global demand and the overzealous congressional ethanol mandate that, if unchanged, could divert up to half of all corn to ethanol production over the next several years.
On top of that, the environmental effects could extend well beyond soil erosion, habitat destruction and tons of fertilizers added to rivers and drinking-water supplies; converting land now in the Conservation Reserve Program to corn production could be a huge step backward in the effort to slow global warming.
How? Every year, the land in the CRP provides greenhouse gas reductions equal to taking 11 million cars off the road, based on U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates. Plowing up the CRP would end that benefit. In addition, it would release carbon dioxide now stored in the soil into the atmosphere, with devastating effects.
If anything, we should make it a priority to expand and protect the CRP as a part of an energy and environmental policy that tries to maximize the economic and environmental return on every taxpayer dollar spent.
We understand that some in the food industry are concerned about the skyrocketing prices of corn. But, to take one example, the reason chicken feed prices are so high is that more than a third of this year's corn crop is destined for our fuel tanks in the form of ethanol. Add weather-induced worries about corn shortages and surging global demand, and feed prices are being pushed to record highs.
America needs a real energy policy focused on higher mileage standards, conservation and clean-energy solutions such as solar and wind, not an ill-conceived ethanol bender that pits food against fuel with few benefits for anyone.
Richard Wiles is co-founder and executive director of the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based non-profit advocacy group that focuses on issues involving the environment and public health.
